Strengthening Attitudes

The summer after my sophomore year of high school my father convinced me to apply for 4-H mock Congress. 4-H – for those of you that don’t know – is a mostly rural organization. Everyone jokes that it’s nothing but “cows, sows, and plows,” which to some extent it is. A lot of the people who participate in it come from very religious backgrounds in very small towns. Needless to say my opinions are very different from the overwhelming majority of 4-Hers.



Before hearing about unforgettable experience that summer it’s important to know a few things. First, our behaviors are affected by four different things: intentions, attitudes, social norms, and our ability to control those behaviors.

Focusing specifically on attitudes, which are reactions to people, things, or ideas that can be positive, negative, or mixed (Petty & Cacioppo, 1983) there are two things that affect how well our attitudes predict our behaviors: (1) how specific a measure of our attitude is (e.g., asking “Do you like high school football?” would be a better predictor of how likely a person is to want to watch your hometown’s football game, than asking “Do you like sports?”) and (2) how strong our attitudes are. That is, the stronger an attitude is, the more likely it will be to link to behavior.

Interestingly, there are different ways to strengthen an attitude, and therefore strengthen predictions of behaviors based on attitudes. Many of these attitude-strengthening factors could be seen in my experience at 4-H Congress.

On just the second day of our mini-legislative session the trivial bills (e.g., using “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, or allowing prayer in school) faded away and the next thing I knew I was standing before 300 suit-wearing peers being bombarded with scathing remarks and looks that could kill. I knew what I was up against; I knew Texas is a conservative state, but I didn’t exactly think that defending gay marriage would start a riot.

Summing every drop of courage my 15-year-old self could muster, I stood there, sweaty palms gripping the podium, emptying out my heart for these people and explaining my stance as best I could with both (1) information and (2) personal experience.

I was armed with everything I had learned about why gay marriage is such an important issue and how it concerns more than just violating archaic religious beliefs. That is, it affects everything from filing taxes to the ability to visit spouses in the hospital to Social Security benefits. Fortunately, the more information you have about a person, object, or idea the stronger your attitude will be, and the more likely you will be to act on it (Davidson, Yantis, Norwood, & Montano, 1985).

As for personal experience, I had one particular person in mind as I stood there being “boo”ed at by people who only hours before had been completely personably, civilized friends. I thought about Hannah, my best friend. I let them know that she deserved to pick out that perfect white dress and throw a bouquet of pale pink lilies and yellow orchids. Importantly, gaining information from personal experience makes attitudes stronger and more stable than just simply observing or receiving information secondhand (Fazio & Zanna, 1981). Maybe if they had known how awesome Hannah is or had a friend of their own who was gay, it might have changed their attitudes.

Sadly, it didn’t. No matter what I said they reacted the same way, with close-minded rage. Their angry voices swelled, filling the floor, their confidence being amplified by their cumulative outrage, until the Speaker of the House was forced by supervisors to call for a recess.

I would say that votes didn’t even need to be tallied for us to find out which side “won,” but the results were enough for me to feel as though I’d achieved my own small personal victory. More than 20% of the votes were “Undecided;” based on the percentage of people who had voted conservatively on every other issue, I like to think that my speech was what changed their minds – even if only a small amount. I fought tooth and nail for what I whole-heartedly believed in; answering every retort from a suit-wearing simpleton with an even better one. Not surprisingly, this only further fueled my support of gay marriage, because when you succeed in resisting change to your attitudes, it makes them even stronger (Tormala & Petty, 2002).
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Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1983). The role of bodily responses in attitude measurement and change. In J. Cacioppo & R. Petty (Eds.), Social psychophysiology: A sourcebook (pp. 51-101). New York: Guilford.

Davidson, A., Yantis, S., Norwood, M., & Montano, D. (1985). Amount of information about the attitude object and attitude-behavior consistency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1184-1198.

Fazio, R. H., & Zanna, M. P. (1981). Direct experience and attitude-behavior consistency. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 14, pp. 162-202). New York: Academic Press.

Tormala, Z., & Petty, R. (2002). What doesn't kill me makes me stronger: The effects of resisting persuasion on attitude certainty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1298-1313.